Can a Failure Move the Heart of God?

I'm a failure. Why should I pray? Why would God even listen to me?

What would be the point of my prayers? I have hardly any faith left, and I have such a lousy track record, why would He even entertain my voice at His throne? So the question is, can a failure move the heart and the hand of God?

Welcome to A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon. After forty years, Moses, who was raised in a palace, ended up raising sheep. He went from walking on marble floors to sleeping in the dirt. He felt he was a failure. He felt he was of no use to God anymore. How can a failure move the heart of God is Carter's title for today's message.

So let's join him right now. I'm reading from the book of Exodus chapter 32, beginning at verse 7 right through to verse 14, if you want to follow along, if you have a device where you can. And I'm reading from the New King James Version. And the Lord said to Moses, Go get down for your people who you brought out of the land of Egypt have corrupted themselves.

They've turned aside quickly out of the way which I commanded them. They've made themselves a molded calf and worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, This is your God, O Israel, that brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And the Lord said to Moses, I have seen this people and indeed it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them and I will make of you a great nation. Then Moses pleaded with the Lord his God and said, Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians speak and say he brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from your fierce wrath and relent from this harm to your people.

Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants in whom you swore by your own self and said to them, I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants and they shall inherit it forever. Verse 14, this is an incredible verse and it says, So the Lord relented from the harm which he said he would do to his people. One of the most profound statements that I have seen, there's obviously a lot of profound statements in the Word of God, but one of the most profound concerning the issue of prayer is verse 10 of Exodus chapter 32, when God Almighty, having fully declared his intent, speaks to a mere man, an 80 year old man, a man who had spent probably 40 plus years of his life feeling like a total abject failure in the sight of God. But yet that same man has the power and God reveals that that same man has the power to change his mind, turn his heart from something he had already determined to do. It's an incredible thought. Imagine a God looking at you and saying, I'm going to do this, now let me alone.

Don't try to change my mind, in other words. But yet Moses intercedes and the intercession of this one man, this 80 year old man, which spent 40 years in a wilderness as a failure in one sense in the work that God had given him to do. God looks at this man and says, now let me alone. Now, most often when we pray, we think that our prayers are answered when we feel the closest to God. When we've come out of 40 days of fasting or we've been reading our Bible faithfully every morning for a month or we've had some victories along the way or maybe just we feel really good about ourselves and we come in and faith seems to be burning in our heart and we really feel that it's at that moment that we have the power in a sense to move the heart and the hand of God in the direction that we're asking for. And that can be the case. I'm not negating that.

That can be the case. But most often when you study the scriptures, you and I will see that it's not at these times that the heart and hand of God were the most deeply moved. It's when there was somebody standing there that knew their unworthiness, somebody who felt like a failure, somebody who knew maybe that they needed God and without God, nothing was going to happen through their lives or in their future. Hebrews chapter 4 verses 15 and 16, the writer says, we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tested as we are and yet without sin. He says, now let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace.

Now picture Esther, if you will, coming into the very throne room of the king. Let us come boldly. It means by invitation. It means God longs to hear your voice.

He wants to understand your petitions and your intercessions and to answer you. So let us come boldly to the throne of grace. And it doesn't say in a time where our faith can move mountains, in a time where we feel like we're on top of our game, in a time where we've had victory and we've lived righteously and we are successful in our sight. No, it says come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

So there's three words there. Come boldly to the throne of grace when you need mercy, when you need that grace of God, when you need that empowerment, that mercy in the sense that that presence of God that can only bring the victory, to find help in time of need. So grace, mercy, help and need, that's the boldness that God invites us to come to his throne with. And so it brings us back again to the question, can a failure move the heart and the hand of God? That's quite a thought because if we lay hold of this truth, see the devil would try to convince you that because you are a failure or because you have failed in what maybe you were given to, maybe you failed at life itself, you failed as in a marriage, you failed to be loyal as an employee, you failed as a friend, you failed, you thought you wanted to be certain things in your character and you failed. And so here you are, you tried to get free of an addiction and you failed. And so I know I'm speaking to thousands perhaps of people in the course of the season where people will see this even after the meeting.

I know I'm speaking to people who are just saying, you're talking about, you're preaching right down my street now. I'm a failure and I know I'm a failure and why should I pray? Why would God even listen to me? What would be the point of my prayers? I have hardly any faith left and I have such a lousy track record, why would he even entertain my voice at his throne? And so the question is, a legitimate question, can a failure move the heart and the hand of God?

Now follow with me for just a moment. In the book of Acts chapter 2, the Apostle Peter speaks an incredibly powerful moving sermon, the first actual sermon of the New Testament that was preached by the early church, a sermon that was so backed. The Bible says you can't come to God unless you're drawn by God himself. You can't come to the knowledge of salvation unless God chooses to reveal it.

And that day, 3,000 people came to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. So obviously the heart and the hand of God are moved through this man Peter as he is preaching and talking about this incredible, wondrous mercy of God that's available to all people who call out to him. But you see this moving of God's heart and hand happens after Peter has wept bitterly. It happens after he has cursed and denied with an oath that he even knows Christ. After he has he has failed in his declarations of love and loyalty and though others deny you, I will not. And though they flee, I won't flee. I'll go with you to Jerusalem.

And if you die, I'll die with you. And all of this bravado that had no grounding in reality whatsoever after he'd gone out and literally was destroyed in his own sight, only to have Christ reappear to him and speak peace into his heart and give him a commission. And so this man, in the depth of his failure, now God is answering his prayers and the heart and the hand of God are moving with him. So powerfully that at one point in the New Testament the scripture says people were laying their sick in the streets that so the shadow of Peter passing by might bring healing into their lives. God was so moved through this failure called Peter. You think of Esther in the Old Testament, this wondrous young girl who's called in for to bring deliverance at a particular time for her people in history. It was at the point where she felt unlovely, at the point where she might have felt like I failed the needs of my husband, the king.

He doesn't desire me anymore. It was at that point that God called her and she went into this inner court of the king and made intercession and brought about great, great deliverance for a people who were destined for the slaughter. God wanted to use a young man called Isaiah, and Isaiah was already in ministry and he's already speaking. God wants to use him in a much deeper way. He wants to give him a much more profound revelation. He wants to put power in his speech and power in his voice to even turn perhaps a tenth of the people that he speaks to back to the worship of the one true and the living God. But before he can use this man, he draws him into his presence and as he drew him into his presence, Isaiah realized how undone he really was. Maybe he felt done up to that point.

I don't know. Maybe he felt like his ministry was going good. Maybe he had one of the clearer words of his generation, but God in his mercy draws him into his presence to the point where he says, woe is me.

I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the Lord of glory, the Lord of hosts. It was at that point the hand of God moves towards him. The mercy of God begins to flow through him. And Isaiah is not only given a word for his nation, but he's given a panoramic view of the redemption of the world as it is through Jesus Christ, right into the coming of Christ again. Moses endured what must have seemed like a lifetime of failure. You can just imagine his life, how he must have felt. How would you feel if you were Moses and you know that you're called of God to deliver your people as you are. I'm speaking to somebody you're called and that deliverance might flow through your life to people around you, beginning in your house and your children, your family. And Moses knew this and he headed out to try to accomplish it in his own strength, only to fail miserably, end up fleeing into the wilderness. And for 40 years, a man who was raised in a palace is now raising sheep. 40 years, there's no longer any plush marble under his feet or carpet any longer.

It's just dust and dirt. 40 years of living with the pain of regret. I blew it. I was given something to do by God. I was given this commission by God and I blew the commission.

My time of effectiveness is over. I am a total utter failure in the sight of God, only to stand at the height perhaps of feeling that way before Almighty God himself, who looks at him and says, now let me alone. You see, what God was speaking to Moses is that you have the power in your littleness, in your nothingness, in your right assessment, may I say, of yourself, you have the power now to move my hand and my heart. If you and I could lay hold of this truth, this one truth, if we could get off of this treadmill of trying to feel like somehow we've got to just work it all up and stir it all up and we've got to have these building blocks of victory underneath us and we have to have read so many chapters of the Bible and we have to memorize scripture and we got to be walking right in every little area of our life. If we can just get out of that thinking and come into the place that the Apostle Paul understood eventually that when I am weak, then I am strong. That the power of God is not made known through my strength, it's made known through my weakness. The greatness of God we heard about is not made known through my life, but it's through his life being lived through mine, his success through my failure, his victory through my defeat, his resurrection through my death. It's all about Jesus Christ.

Everything is about him. And I'm starting to understand these things now. As I get older, I'm starting to understand what prayer really is, how it really can move the heart of God, how a spiritual awakening could actually occur in our generation. When God's people everywhere just rise up and say, I understand now we heard about this goodness and this greatness of our God through Jesus Christ. I understand that there's something in the heart and the character of God that I've missed in my desire to please him. I now understand that in my nothingness, because all flesh is as filthy rags in the sight of a holy God.

Isaiah knew that. All of our works that we do are nothing, they're futile, they're worthless. Everything is of him. Everything is in him. Everything that we have is in Christ. Everything we ever will be is through Jesus Christ.

And he's not looking for our strength to do anything. He's looking for us to acknowledge what we really are. And then when we do, then we start to acknowledge who he really is. A God of mercy, a God of power, a God of incredible grace. We start shouting, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are filled with his glory. When suddenly we die and he lives.

When we don't have anything left to prove, but we're saying, God, prove yourself through me. I offer my life as a living sacrifice to you for your purposes on the earth, which is my reasonable service. That's what the Bible says about me.

I won't boast and if you should put a crown on my head, I'll be the first to throw it at your feet when I get to heaven, knowing I'm not worthy. You are the only one who is worthy. You are the only one who can save.

You're the only one who can empower. You are the only one who can show mercy to a wayward generation. The Lord said to Moses, I've seen this people, indeed it's a stiff necked people. Now therefore, let me alone that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them and I will make of you a great nation.

Now verse 11 starts and says, Moses pleaded with the Lord his God and said, Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt with a great power and with a mighty hand? You see only a person who had known failure and mercy could pray like that. It's the kind of a man says, God, I deserve to be judged as well. I deserve you. You didn't have to show me mercy. Yes, they failed you, but I failed you too as well. I knew you were God and I chose to be God in myself and they built a calf and I built myself up as something that I wasn't at the time or nor did I have the strength to do. But yet in my failure, you, you reached down in my wilderness and you hurt maybe the ache of my heart and you pulled me out of my wilderness. And so why, why would your wrath burn hot against your people that you brought out of the land of Egypt? You, you went to such expense and such power to bring them out.

God, why now? You knew what they were. You knew what I was.

Moses could say, but yet you called me. You knew my failure. You knew my struggles. You knew my temper.

You knew my, my trials. And yet you called me and you brought me out of the wilderness. And so why would you, why would you harm them when you showed me such mercy?

It's the only man who's known mercy could make a recession like that. In verse 12, he said, why should the Egyptians speak and say, he brought them out to harm them, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth. Turn from your fierce wrath and relent from this harm to your people. Here's, here's what Moses is saying. Lord God, think about what your enemies will say about you, about your name, that you have some insidious purpose to the things that you do. You, you draw people out with great promise. You say, I'm bringing you to the promised land. Then you destroy them. Think about your reputation.

Think about your name. I remember years ago when pastor Teresa and myself and a bus driver began to pray, we were in an area of 40 square miles where there was no Christian testimony as long back as we knew or even history recorded. And we were told by other people, we're told by others who, who had the skill set to do something for the Lord in that area that it could not be done. I remember this one pastor told me, we've sent people in there. We've put money in there and everything, everything we've done has failed.

We call it a pastoral burnout area. And then he looked at me and said, you know, if you try to do something in that area, the work will not grow, but you will, you will grow. And I remember leaving and sitting in my car and I said, God, I don't believe that man. I don't believe that man.

And I'll tell you why I don't believe him. Because he's saying, there's something you can't do. He's saying, there's a place you can't go. He's saying, there's a darkness you can't break. He's saying, there's a people you can't redeem. He's saying that the devil in this world can put boundaries and borders around a certain geographic area in the world and they can put a sign that says, know God allowed and somehow you have to obey that.

Well, I don't believe it. And I began to pray that way. And I began to pray exactly as Moses prayed, not fully knowing it back then, but I remember my prayer. Lord, it's dishonoring to you to have all of these people here lost in their sin, to have people say that you can't break into this area when there's somebody here interceding, when somebody as weak as we are, here we are, we are calling out to you and asking you to be God in this area.

Long story short, less than 10 years later, there's three churches, a food bank, a Christian school, and a testimony that had gone far and wide of what the Lord had done and is still doing today in that area for those people. And then he says these words, remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants to whom you swore by your own self. And you said to them, I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and all this land that I've spoken of, give to your descendants and they shall inherit it forever. Moses was saying, God, I remind you that your promise to your people is to bring increase to them. Your promise is to bless them. Your promise is to make them something they could never hope to be in themselves, take them out of what they could never get out of and bring them into what they could never hope to have unless you bring them there. Your promise is increase, not destruction. And I remind you of your word. It was at this point, the Lord relented from the harm that he said he would do to his people. My desire for you and the desire in my heart for the rest of my life is God would have to look at me every morning and say, now leave me alone.

Now leave me alone. That I would understand that the intercession, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. James told us in the New Testament, Elijah was a man just like we are, a person just like we are. And he prayed that it might not rain and the rain stopped for three and a half years. And then he prayed that it might rain and it rained again and the land gave her increase. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Not righteousness in ourselves but receiving the forgiveness that God's given to us through Jesus Christ. Understanding that we don't deserve it and we can't earn it.

It was given to us as a free gift when God sent his son to die for each of us on a cross 2,000 years ago. The promise of God is not to destroy us when we deserve it. The promise of God is to bring his own name to reputation through each of our lives. And the promise of God is in spite of our failure to bring increase into each of our lives. And so I'm going to challenge you to say, Lord I deserve to be destroyed but you sent your son to die in my place that I might be forgiven. And through him your Bible tells me that I become as clean as God is.

We are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Yes I deserve it because of my failure but your promise is not to destroy me. Your promise is to bring increase to my life. Blessing to my family. Deliverance to my friends. Joy to my community. That your name will be exalted and glorified one more time in the earth. And so Father in Jesus name I ask you almighty God send a spiritual awakening to your people.

Only you can do this Lord. We deserve everything the children of Israel deserved at that time. We deserve it. We even built our own God in this nation. But Lord to you belongs mercy. And it couldn't be said of you that somebody stood in the gap that somebody because you said to the prophet Ezekiel I didn't want to destroy the nation so I sought for a man to stand in the gap and make up the hedge that I should not destroy it but I found none. But it can't be said of you that somebody stood in the gap.

Somebody offered their life to make up the hedge and you turned a calloused heart or deafened ear or blinded eye towards it. It couldn't be said of you Lord. It can't be. It can't be.

It can't be said. So I'm asking you. I'm asking you for mercy on our generation. I'm asking you for your Holy Spirit to come not because we deserve it just because of who you are. I'm asking you for a moment where so many souls are swept into your kingdom that nobody could count them. Thank you Lord God for hearing our cry. Thank you Lord Jesus Christ for bringing us to this place that only you can. You've been listening to Carter Conlon from Times Square Church in New York City. For more information and resources to help you in your walk in Christ, log on to tsc.nyc. That's tsc.nyc. And be sure to be with us next week for A Call to the Nation with Carter Conlon.